Welcome To Overclockers.com

Welcome to our community at Overclockers.com! This article is about who we are, where we came from, and what we value! It’s also a bit of an FAQ.

The Overclockers.com Mission

We’ve been online since November 1998, and we pride ourselves on sticking to the same ideals we were founded upon!

As put forth by Joe Citarella, Skip MacWilliam, and Ed Stroligo:

We are a team. We are a community. We are a fellowship made strong by mutual respect and shared dedication to the task of enriching all who come here. We are respectable, for we share our bounty. We will endure, for we continue to grow. We will continue to grow as long as those who come to us find what they need for their own betterment, and the betterment of those who follow after them.

We are a community of technical enthusiasts helping eachother get the most out of our computers and peripherals while also upholding ethical and moral standards. Our forums are strictly moderated to maintain a friendly and helpful atmosphere where everyone can get help, have fun, and enjoy our hobby! If you’d like to be part of the group or you need some help cranking up the Mhz, anyone can create an account – once you are registered, the “New Member Welcome Mat” is a good place to say hello and get started!

Who runs the site?

You run Overclockers.com! The site is produced exclusively by it’s readers and members. Here is a small sampling of the technical aspects of what our volunteers do for the site:

Our lead editors are listed on the Contact page. These individuals provide guidance, schedule publishing, and maintain a consistent focus for the site. They are regular members from our own community who volunteer their time, keeping fresh content on Overclockers.com in an effort to carry on the OC tradition and customs set forth by those who came before them.

Our forum staff is listed on the forum leaders page. The Red and Green guys enforce the rules in an effort to keep the place welcoming, friendly, and helpful for everyone! The gentlemen in blue are exceptionally helpful members who have been hand-picked to be recognized for their spirit and contributions – they set the bar, leading by example for how members are expected to act maturely, politely, and share what they know with others. It also acts as a bit of motivation – exceptional members who participate in the forum while upholding the sites core values are eventually recognized and asked to wear the blue stars to formally represent our site within the community.

Everyone involved in our daily operations are regular members of the community, some have just volunteered their time and accepted a bit of extra responsibility to keep things running each day!

Who owns Overclockers.com?

Since September 2009, our site has been owned by iNet Interactive, a social media company who manages our bills, arranges advertising, and takes care of the back-end hardware and software which keeps the site running. In daily operation, iNet supports our technical needs as we express them, while entrusting the community with full editorial control over content and focus.

What runs Overclockers.com?

Overclockers.com runs within a clustered hosting arrangement, serving our site as well as other iNet Interactive properties. The cluster is comprised of multiple web front-ends and database back-ends. This arrangement allows iNet to ensure maximum resource utilization as well as availability.

I want to improve Overclockers.com. How do I get involved?

We have an excellent forum thread which explains how our content engine works at Overclockers.com – its a great introduction to getting involved! We handle our business casually as we are all hobbyists here volunteering our time, which has some great benefits. We are extremely flexible and we spend a fair bit of energy figuring out how to make new things work within the vision and focus of the site, and we are not quick to shoot down any solid suggestions. There are limitations to what we can do, but we look for ways to make things work first, and only discard suggestions as a last resort.

I want to complain. How should I go about that?

Criticism is often the quickest path to progress, especially when its constructive. We want to hear it! We have a feedback form which allows you to give us your feedback without jumping through any hoops. The form notifies the site leadership of your feedback and it is constantly monitored – all perspectives are taken under consideration, and this plays into the decision making process as the site moves forward. Rest assured you are being heard – every feedback submission is replied to if you provide a valid email address!

When I click “leave a comment” at the bottom of an article, why am I taken to the forums?

We use a software plugin which automatically creates threads in Overclockers Forums for each article. You can see what those threads look like in our O/Community Forum. In order to comment on articles or ask questions you must setup an account and login to the forums – once you post a message, your comment will appear in the forum and below the article. This makes it easy for community members to find and discuss articles, while also keeping the quality of discussion high – you will find no trolls, no spam, and no flaming attached to our articles! All guidelines and rules for our community can be found here.

What are these ratings at the bottom of product reviews?

The three ratings assigned to products in reviews are explained here. In short, Overclockers.com does not give awards to different products or arbitrary point/star ratings in our reviews. Instead, one of three ratings will be provided: Approved, Meh or Fail.

Where else will I find the Overclockers.com community?

Overclockers.com members maintain a presence within social networking sites, participate in distributed computing projects, and also compete in hardware benchmarking. Some links for these items are listed here:

If the community thinks anything relevant was left off this article, post up. It's just off the cuff, and will stand as the general site introduction and FAQ for some time - improvements and additions are welcome. Comments, PM, or email is fine. :)

I've been reading the site since '99 but a little less in the last couple years.
Did Ed ever post anything more about his decision to leave?
I imagine Joe must have posted something about the decision to turn the site over to iNet?
I'm not looking to discuss all that in the thread but can someone link me to any discussions that happened at the time? After reading them for so long I feel like I know them a little and I'd like to read anything they had to share on the subject.

My reading had also dropped off a bit (until I took over running the site, I read everyday now), and I started around the year 2000. The site developed and changed a bit through that time, but I still read it regularly ever since I started.
Ed's email still works and is available on the internet if you want to ask him. It wouldn't be my place to share anything we've spoken about personally - I didn't know him, but I reached out to him personally in email because I missed him too.
Joe was being pulled in other directions by life, work, and he felt it was time to hand things over for the progress and best interest of the site and community so that things could be carried on. We coordinated very closely in changing the site over from the old way of doing things, to the new community driven model I developed which we currently run on. He posted about it in this article:http://www.overclockers.com/inet-interactive-acquires-overclockers/